High speed milling of integral parts with thin walls

This paper presents a brief analysis of the features specialties and problems of machining of integral parts with thin walls. The high-speed milling of the aluminum alloy tri-wave-guide samples is presented as a case study. Its machining time reduces to about one third of conventional speed milling time under conditions of keeping small cutting deformation and high machining quality, and omission of the heat treatment working procedure. This is achieved through suitable clamping of the samples, suitable cutting procedure, optimizing of milling art and tool path, reasonable choice of cutting tool, optimizing of cutting parameters, suitable lubricating and cooling. The practical experiences and measurement data obtained show that high cutting speed, high feed rate and small cutting depth should be adopted for high speed milling of integral parts with thin walls. This could promote the implementation of high speed milling.